


Blame It On The Fame.

by 3DBABE1999



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Bottom James T. Kirk, Child Neglect, Hurt James T. Kirk, James T. Kirk Angst, James T. Kirk Has Issues, News Media, Paparazzi, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Abuse, Past Sexual Assault, Past Torture, Psychological Torture, Rape, Social Media, Tarsus IV, Torture, Underage Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-05-20 15:38:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 12
Words: 8,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19379668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3DBABE1999/pseuds/3DBABE1999
Summary: ....James T. Kirk.. Born famous because of his father's sacrifice..Jim is raised in the lime-light..Where every form of Media knows "all" the ins and outs of Jim's life, through every step of Jim's life, including Tarsus IV..Jim still winds up a "Genius Level Repeat Offender" it just gets covered by the MediaJim still winds up getting dared "to do better" by Pike and going to The Academy..Jim gets bullied in The Academy because everyone thinks Jim basically gets away with everything due to his fame and tragic past (like any time Jim gets a pass on anything or the option on a pass for something (say a Survival Training Simulation because it might Trigger him) then they think Jim is getting off easy and that if he can't handle the things thrown at him then it's just proof he doesn't deserve to be there.. Cue bullying that takes things WAY TO FAR)......





	1. Chapter 1

..

..

Mere seconds after The Escape Shuttle was docked and the door hissed open.. 

Winona was in a wheelchair holding a newborn James Tiberius Kirk swaddled in a blanket..

Only minutes old and the entire known Universe and then some, already knew his name because his father's last words to Winona were already shared to every corner of existence and back due to the last Comm that George Kirk had shared with his wife somehow being publicly broadcast only seconds after George Kirk died and minutes before Winona's Escape Shuttle made a safe docking with a nearby Space Station..

When the door hissed open.. Winona blinked blindly as dozens of camera flashes went off and a whole bunch of people started talking at once and crowding in towards the door of the shuttle trying to shove microphones or Recording Devices into Winona's face.. 

"Mrs. Kirk! Mrs. Kirk!" Reporters and Paparazzi alike called to Winona, clammering for attention..

"Mrs. Kirk, what were your last seconds aboard The Kelvin like?!" One person shouted over the frenzy.

"Mrs. Kirk, over here, look this way!" Winona blinked dazedly in that direction, the tears from the death of her husband still weren't even dry yet, which caused a spawning of more people calling for her to "look" towards them.. 

"Mrs. Kirk, can we have something from young James?!"

Winona blinked taken aback not realizing who the "James" they were talking about was for a few seconds.. The squirming bundle soon reminded her.

"Ummm ??" She stammered "He's a baby ??"

"We need to see him!" Someone shouted.

"Yeah! Let us see him!.. He's the last thing George Kirk left US with!" Someone else shouted, injecting everyone with immediate feelings of entitlement over the last piece that George Kirk left in The Universe, no one caring at all that the last piece left by George Kirk was a living, breathing, innocent baby or that George Kirk had another child that was only three.. 

Winona flinched at the words as if slapped and her infant was pulled from her arms by a nurse that was on the shuttle and the nurse held young Jim aloft to the delight of all those with cameras who snapped dozens of pictures and recorded a lot of video footage of the squirming, whimpering newborn while Winona looked helpless, upset and very confused.. 

"Can I get an autograph?!" Someone asked with a yell as they shoved their way to the front of the fray holding up a Poster of The Kelvin.

Winona blinked as a pen was shoved into her hand .. She just blindly made a squiggly line on the poster from the shock of it because she couldn't even compute how to write her name right then..

"And the baby?" The person held out the poster looking hopefully at the nurse holding Jim.. An ink pad appeared out of nowhere and the nurse pressed Jim's bare foot to the ink pad then down on the poster leaving the baby's footprint in ink..

That lasted almost half an hour.. With people wedging themselves towards the front for pictures or autographs.. Some even being so bold to ask to hold Jim and get a picture with him.. It lasted up until someone from The Space Station's Medical Team forced their way through the crowd and demanded they back off and declared that both Winona and Jim needed to be taken to the Space Station's MedBay all while prying young Jim from the nurse's arms as another member from the Space Station's Medical Team wheeled Winona in the same direction the other was storming off in.. 

The nurse that had taken Jim from his mother's arms and held him aloft for people to take pictures and recordings of and who had handed him to strangers and allowed those strangers to take pictures with Jim and let them have his footprint in ink, well.. That nurse got in serious trouble.. 

Just one of the first people in what would eventually be a long line of people, to lose their job because they prioritized a few seconds of fame over their oaths and/or over the well-being of a child..

 

"We apologize, profusely, Mrs. Kirk." The person who had taken Jim from the nurse said in a very sincere tone. "We didn't know this was going to happen.. We just barely got the report of what happened and suddenly The Station's Transporters were being overloaded as people started coming in by the droves from pretty much every Planet in The Federation.. We tried heading them off but Freedom Of The Press kind of tied our hands .. So we tried to beat them all to The Docking Bay.. But a few of them brought muscle to keep us away as long as possible and believe me.. I will be filing Charges for them interfering in a Medical Emergency and keeping patients from timely Medical Care.. "

"I .. Um ?? " Winona started to talk but didn't really know what to say .. "I don't really know what to do.. My husband.. He's .. He's .." She said as her face crumpled and she began to cry "I don't know how I'm supposed to go on.. How do I tell our Sammy? What am I supposed to do now?.. What happens next?"

It all poured out and the doctor stood there sympathetically "You need to rest.. You just gave birth and you lost your husband only seconds after.. You've been through an awful lot and dealing with just the Shock alone could be dangerous. So you rest and you let us take care of you and the baby and then we go from there."


	2. Chapter 2

..

...

Winona did not get much reprieve.. Nor did her newborn son..

The Medical Staff released them from the Space Station's MedBay three days after they were admitted.. Winona and Jim were to be taken from the MedBay to the Transporter Room where they would be sent to Riverside, Iowa where George's parents were taking care of Sam..

And once again Winona was wheeled out into the Space Station in a wheelchair holding her infant son..

This time there were lurkers waiting by the entrance of the MedBay.. A series of flashing lights went off in Winona's dazed face and caused her to flinch and jerk in surprise which in turn roused Jim and caused him to cry.. 

The nurse wheeling Winona out pulled the wheelchair back inside the doors which swished shut, blocking the cameras from seeing Winona and her son.

"New plan." the nurse said "I'm going to request The Station transport you and the baby out straight from MedBay to Riverside so those vultures out there can't get anymore shots at you two." 

Winona nodded, there were tears in her eyes.. She was suddenly very prone to easy crying jags lately and it didn't take much to set her off and cause the tears to fall..

Winona sniffled and hugged Jim close as the nurse requested a Transporter Beam straight from MedBay to Riverside, Iowa..

There was a response through The Comm.. Then the nurse said "Ready?"

Winona nodded.. Then seconds later she and her baby were particles of light..

It was evening in Riverside.. The sky was going dusky with hues of orange, gray and purple, George's and Winona's families were already waiting at The Transporter Station at the edge of town near where Starfleet was building a new ship at the shipyard..

Winona was wheeled off of the Transporter Padd by the nurse.. Hers and George's parents were waiting down the ramp the Transporter Pads.. Winona's father took over pushing the wheelchair as the nurse ran back up to the Transporter Pads and was Beamed back to the Space Station..

Winona and Jim were wheeled out towards a hovercar .. But there was a gaggle of reporters and paparazzi already waiting outside and when they all realized that Winona Kirk and the already famous days old James Tiberius Kirk were coming out of the Transporter Station, it did not take long for them to flock in the direction of the mother and child..

"Get back you assholes!" Winona's sister shouted.. 

There was a frenzy of flashing lights and a clamor of voices trying to all talk at once as George's father, Tiberius, helped Winona with Jim and then the three-year-old Sam into the hovercar and Winona's father, James, pushed the empty wheelchair into the crowd of assholes and dove into the hovercar with everyone else and then the hovercar sped away with the reporters and paparazzi making their ways towards their own vehicles to follow..

"Damn sick people!" James cursed, Winona's sister nodded in outraged agreement..

"We'll all be staying with you at the farmhouse to help out until the bastards finally get bored and decide there's more interesting things to do besides hound a grieving woman and her baby.." Winona's mom said and everyone in the car hummed their affirmations to the fact.. 

"Thank you.." Winona replied as she cradled Jim to her chest with one arm and hugged Sam to her side with the other..

"No need to thank us.. You and the boys are our family.." Tiberius stated from the driver's seat..

Winona nodded and hugged her sons tighter..

The hovercar pulled up to the farmhouse that was passed to George from his grandfather.. There were even more people with cameras hovering around the porch and along the driveway..

"Damn it all to hell!!.. Can't these people take a hint?!" George's mom growled.. 

James and Tiberius took off their coats and used them as shields to keep the prying eyes and cameras away from Winona and her sons as the rest of everyone in the hovercar helped get Winona and the boys out and hurried them towards the farmhouse with Tiberius and James alongside holding up their coats to keep Winona and her sons out of their prying gazes.. 

Once inside, the family slammed the door shut in the faces if all those still outside and clicked it locked.

"I tried to get rid of them but they wouldn't leave!" Frank, who was the husband of Winona's sister, stated as he came out of the kitchen .. "They won't stop knocking on the door every twenty seconds neither!!.." 

As if to emphasize Frank's point there was a banging knock on the door and Frank gestured with a hand as if to say "See what I mean?" then huffed and yelled at the closed and locked door "Like hell we'll open the door for any'o'you!" 

"Yelling at a closed door won't do anything to get them to go away." Tiberius stated "We'll just have to wait 'em out.."


	3. Chapter 3

..

..

They spent two days holed up in the farmhouse and eventually needs won out..

Winona's mom, Marla, needed a refill of her seizure medicines..

No one had expected or planned for anything to happen the way it did.. It just had and in the hurried rush to get to her grandbaby things had been left twisting in the wind.. Namely a bottle with only four pills in it had been left without a much needed refill...

At the time Marla hadn't known anything more than her pregnant daughter's ship had been attacked and that Winona had gone into premature labor.

James had gotten them to the nearest Transporter Station and had, had them beamed to Riverside where they were met by George's parents who had known about as much as they did...

Then James's and Marla's other daughter, Tessa, and Tessa's husband, Frank, had appeared on the Transporter Pad also having come to be whatever support and help they could to George's family while they all waited on news.. 

The broadcast of George's and Winona's last words to each other went public mere minutes after Tiberius and Hannah were told their oldest son had died.. 

George's mother, Hannah, had wailed, Tiberius had raged, young Sam had clung to the adults, confused and sad and not knowing why or what was going on..

There hadn't really been time for Marla to think about medicine..

And she paid the price for the missed dose come the evening of the second day..

Marla had two back to back seizures, worrying Tessa and Winona both.. 

Marla kept assuring everyonr she could hold out another day without her meds.. And she hoped the camera wielding maniacs on the lawn would get the point and go away by then..

But it wasn't to be.. 

The third day brought even more people to the lawn.. Some people had bullhorns that they would yell at the house with about how they just wanted to see what The Federation's Hero left them all with.. It was a bit much .. But people could be a bit much and not care about the pain and damage they caused to others..

Winona spent a lot of time pale and crying and not wanting to talk or eat.. While Tessa fretted over Marla and Sammy and Tiberius and Hannah held each other and Winona in their shared grief of the loss of George.. When an idiot with a bullhorn demanded a public funeral and public memorial for George and woke the newborn Jim and caused both Winona and the baby to cry, James called the cops and got the groups of people removed from the property.. But that didn't stop the throngs of people from just reconvening on the far side of the public street right across from the farmhouse.. Frank offered to go into town and get Marla's prescription refilled which was a huge relief to everyone who simply wanted to avoid the circus outside.

Frank made his way to the hovercar with people across the street shouting at him and snapping pictures ... A few of the media hounds followed Frank while others stayed to "get the good stuff" ..

At the local pharmacy, Frank caught sight of a few supermarket tabloid gossip rags...

George, Winona, Tiberius, Hannah, Marla, Jim, baby James and young Sammy were plastered all over the covers of many of the wannabe magazines in varying sick collages with headlines like "Winona Kirk's family, James Bradley, and Tessa Davis, get violent with the press!" showing a picture of Tessa with a little word bubble above her head and "Get back you assholes!" printed inside the bubble and a larger picture of James angrily shoving the wheelchair into the crowd before diving into the hovercar.. Another gossip rag's headline "George Kirk's widow has emotional meltdown!" with a picture of a dazed teary eyed Winona in a wheelchair holding baby Jim on the cover. And on yet another tabloid "The Last Piece Of a Hero: The Gift George Kirk Gave Us All Before He Died." and pictures of baby Jim being held aloft by a nurse with the promise of more pictures inside.

Frank grunted in disgust and fought the urge to just upend the whole damn rack as he waited for the slow ass pharmacist to refill his Mother-In-Law's prescription..

A man with a camera in his hand had the audacity to come near Frank asking if he had pictures of Winona and Baby Jim that he'd like to sell.. Frank barely restrained himself from punching the man remembering how the tabloids had twisted James' anger to look like a violent tantrum..

Then the man started giving numbers.. Amounts of how much he'd be willing to give for good shots of Winona and especially Baby Jim.. 

And Frank.. He wasn't a strong man.. He had vices.. The kind that called to him from the liquor store down the road.. It was perfect.. A way to get his hands on a bottle of booze without the suspiciousness of missing money because it would be extra money no one would know about.. So Frank caved.. He showed the man a picture that Tessa had taken with Winona and Baby Jim because she was a proud sister and a proud aunt and it was during a rare moment of happiness and levity in such dark times.. A rare moment that would now be taken and tainted and twisted by the tabloids..


	4. Chapter 4

..

..

It soon became a part of everyday life..

Little Sammy in Pre-K at four-years-old crying because no one could come to his birthday party because parents didn't want their children swarmed by people with cameras and to prove their point, paparazzis spent everyday outside on the sidewalk outside the school with their zoom lenses trying to get a picture through the classroom's huge window until the teacher closed the blinds and everyday when Sam went into the playground for recess no one could play with him so the paparazzis always got several pictures of a lonely little Sam looking sad ..

It never got old..

When baby Jim's first birthday came and they tried to celebrate it with a cake and a barbeque in the yard and it only lasted for a second after the cake was sat on the folding table as grandpa Tiberius and grandpa James pulled a struggling person with a camera out of the bushes that were planted on the inside of the privacy fence .. The celebration of baby Jim's first birthday had to be moved indoors while the person with the camera was escorted away by angry grandfathers..

The next day the headlines of tabloids called Jim's and Sam's grandpas violent and uncivil and talked about how the families clearly weren't properly mourning George well enough since they dared to do something happy on the anniversary of his death showing old pictures of Winona in black crying as she was handed a flag at the empty casket funeral Starfleet put together a week after George's death with the word "Fake?" in bold pink bubble letters and a pink arrow pointing at Winona's tears and cruel words about how George Kirk's sons must be suffering being raised by people who must have never really loved George especially poor baby Jim since he never even got to know his father.

Jim's second birthday was spent outside of Iowa at James's and Marla's lakeside home with Tessa, Frank, Tiberius and Hannah trying to guve the boys a bit of normal, taking them swimming at the lake and getting them into throwing water balloons at each other and the grown ups.. Winona couldn't be there because she had used all of her bereavement leave and had to return to her Duty with Starfleet and for a short time Winona took the brunt of the paparazzi as they swarmed her to get pictures of her in her Uniform as she walked out of the San Francisco Starfleet Headquarters with the papers issuing her new orders.. She was to report to The Excellsior a small ship to slowly work her back into things.. She had two days to spend with her sons before going back to the stars for a ten month run.. 

Tabloid headlines were printed and on display before Winona boarded the shuttle to the Station where The Excellsior was docked.. Headlines like "Abandoning her sons to return to Space?" over pictures of her in Uniform lined supermarket shelves.. And as the shuttle doors closed her last sight of her children was stolen from her by bright camera flashes searing her vision white and when she regained her focus the doors had already locked shut and the shuttle was already lifting off.. She had waved to them and instinctively knows they waved back.. She can picture one of Jim's chubby baby hands waving while the other was probably shoved in his drooly mouth.. But she hadn't gotten to actually see it.. The moment taken from her by bright flashing lights..


	5. Chapter 5

..

.. 

Both sets of grandparents plus Tessa and Frank took turns juggling the boys back and forth trying to keep the paparazzi away from the boys as much as possible during the ten months Winona would be gone..

Frank was going to meetings for Alcholics Anonymous and was doing good, constantly fighting that battle against addiction wasn't easy especially with cameras watching his every move.. But he had support from his wife and both sets of Jim's and Sam's grandparents plus his own parents and siblings who pitched in to help keep the paparazzi away from his attempts at recovery whenever and wherever possible.. George Kirk's younger siblings would help with hiding Jim and Sam to keep the paparazzi guessing where the kids were all so Frank could get better without cameras poking into his life so much so when it was Frank's and Tessa's turn to take the boys, Tessa and Frank could actually enjoy time with their nephews without so much strain which could put enough pressure on Frank to cause him to relapse back to drinking..

Then .. Tessa started getting sick ..

Treatments and Medicines weren't cheap and the call of the bottle had never been so strong..

So Frank sold copies of pictures of his wife's family, hers and Winona's parents as kids and young adults with Tessa and Winona as children.. Candids of Hannah and Tiberius and their younger children who had yet to have their lives so marred and turned upside down by people with cameras because they had managed to stay out if the limelight during the first years after George died.. He even got his hands on pictures of George to sell.. He felt guilty.. He had met George, liked him.. Knew the man's family and loved them like his own.. But.. Tessa was sick and it was hard to cope with all of it without the crutch of liquor to help carry him through it.. 

So Frank sold picture after picture making sure to include a few good shots of George Kirk's sons especially the golden child Jim that the paparazzi loved so much..

And the money poured in well enough for months and months and Frank was able to afford Tessa's medications and treatments amd a few dozen bottles of good booze and no one was any the wiser.. After all they were just pictures.. What real harm could it do to sell them when it brought in the money he needed?

And Tessa was healthy and happy and alive.. The stress of having pictures the paparazzi shouldn't have access to being on display from tabloid racks was seemingly minimal.. So Frank thought that no real harm was being done.. At least.. No more harm than usual.. After all they were already always being followed by cameras.. What was a few more pictures taken in the grand scheme of things?

Battling for Tessa's health and his own failing sobriety took its toll.. 

Frank began to change.. The paranoia he would be caught selling pictures of the people who sacrificed so much to support him in his times of need began to have an affect.. He was always so afraid Tessa would catch him or Jim, Marla, Tiberius, Hannah George's siblings.. Someone he knew and loved would catch him and hate him and be disappointed in him.. He became defensive.. Agressive.. And the tabloids had a field day with his decline putting him even more on edge.. 

Then Winona was back.. She had a few months leave to be with tge boys and the pressure dismounted.. The truth still hadn't come out and the media was distracted in a new frenzy over Winona's return that made Frank and his problems fade quietly into the background where he could quietly get dry again without anyone ever even knowing he had fallen off the wagon again in the first place..


	6. Chapter 6

..

..

When Sam was eight and Jim was five, Hannah passed away in her sleep.. She had been seventy-three..

The circus of paparazzi swarmed her funeral and tabloids brandished words like "A mother's heartbreak takes its toll.. Hannah Kirk passes away only five years after the death of her Federation's Hero, son, George." bringing the media back full force into the lives of Winona's extended family..

And things had just barely started to almost be close to normal again..

The media once again focused most of its attention on young Jim, causing some resentment from Sam because sometimes it was like everyone forgot that he even existed..

That resentment built and built because Jim still got to have friends when Sam had been ostracized for the very same reason Jim was popular..

When Sam was twelve and Jim was nine, Sam started hanging out with some teenagers that partied, drank and did drugs.. Which brought cameras upon cameras snapping away pictures of a twelve-year-old Sam at a party with a huge bowl of mixed prescription pills, beer and weed.. Sam had been holding a beer in one hand and a joint in the other.. Thr headline of the tabloid "Dishonoring a fallen hero's memory, George Kirk's oldest child goes off the rails in a desperate bid for his mother's love and attention."

Winona and Sam's and Jim's remaining grandparents had been furious.. They blamed the media more than they blamed Sam and they showered Sam with love and support.

Sam was put into counselling and therapy and Winona got a little bit of Family Medical Leave to spend time with her sons and help her oldest recover..

Things were smoothing out from that rocky patch.. When.. Another tragedy struck.. Tiberius had a stroke.. Putting the man in the hospital for emergency surgery.. He lived ... But was weaker and had a hard time caring for himself and he didn't want to be a burden on his remaining children or Winona.. So he put himself in a retirement home and signed everything he owned over to his grandchildren.. Within another six months Tiberius had another two strokes, the second one paralyzing one side of his body.. Tiberius started having problems breathing and developed a bronchial infection.. The weakness and the illness took its toll and Tiberius didn't live to see the next anniversary of his oldest son's death..

The death of Tiberius kicked up another media frenzy.. "A family shadowed by tragedy: George Kirk's father passes away at seventy-eight." was printed in bold letters on the top of pictures of George Kirk's grief stricken extended family attending yet another funeral ..

Sam fell into a depression, he had been close to his grandpa Tiberius, he would sit in his room and stare at pictures of himself as a baby riding on his grandpa Tiberius' shoulders with his dad standing to the side laughing and his mom beside his dad hugged against his dad's side smiling at the camera and his grandma Hannah standing by Tiberius with her arms outstretched as if to catch Sam if he fell.. A moment from when life was simple and still made sense frozen in time with Sam holding the fragile memory in his hands wishing he could go back to that..

Sam started hanging back out with the bad crowd again. He was thirteen and angry at how complete strangers thought they were entitled to view his life through a scewed lense.. He began posing with his middle finger flipping off the cameras anytime he spotted a paparazzi following him.. Soon Sam was known as "A Bad Boy" and he wasn't even fourteen yet..

Winona's mom and dad and Tessa and Frank would try to take the boys out of the spotlight as much as possible but Winona had to go back to space, this time for eighteen months and there wasn't much she could do to shield her sons from the storm it kicked up, leaving Winona's parents and sister and brother-in-law to weather the fallout..

And the bad just got worse .. 

Tessa's health began failing again as her Cancer came back worse than before, metastisising to her lungs..

James and Marla and Frank were always so busy dealing with Tessa's failing health that it left Sam free to get into trouble...

Tessa was in the hospital in critical condition when James got the call that Sam had been picked up for shoplifting at the mall when he was supposed to have been at school..

That was Frank's turning point.. He was at the police station bailing out his oldest nephew instead of at his wife's bedside when she died.. From that moment on.. Frank didn't see the boy he had once loved, he instead saw the no good hooligan who had stolen the last moments of his wife's life from him.. 

To add salt to the wound when Frank showed back up at the hospital, too late to be there for his wife when she passed, Frank walked into the room to find Jim curled up beside Tessa, the littlest Kirk had taken those last moments that Frank would never get to have..


	7. Chapter 7

..

..

Winona couldn't come for her own sister's funeral having used the last of her leave for Tiberius' Funeral.. Which made Frank's anger grow harder and heavier..

James and Marla did everything they could to ease the burden from Frank's shoulders but the man was already a fire pit of hatred inside and it was all too easy to fall back into drinking with no Tessa to want to try to quit for, even his own parents and siblings were putting distance between themselves and him.. 

James and Marla took on full time care for Sam and Jim.. Sam was in an outpatient rehab facility that helped him stay clean and sober plus he had to do Community Service for the shoplifting stunt he pulled.. 

Frank devolved into worse things than drinking.. Taking up gambling and getting into trouble.. 

James and Marla still considered him family and understood that losing Tessa had sunk the man low especially when he was already fighting to keep sober so they bailed Frank out and put him in rehab and helped him get back on his feet.. The tabloids were just background noise in all of their lives at this point and they mostly all learned to ignore cameras and curious stares pointed their ways.

Life was just starting to become a semblance of normal again..

Frank was sober, Sam was sober and clean, Jim was a certified genius acing all of his advanced placement classes at just eleven-years-old putting him on track to graduate high school before he was thirteen and Winona would soon be getting more Shore Leave..

Then Marla had a seizure that left her impaired and wheelchair bound and James focused all of his energy on caring for her leaving Frank to take up the slack with Jim and Sam..


	8. Chapter 8

..

..

At first Frank did his best..

He stayed sober and kept to his therapy and ignored the Siren Song of an easy payday and all the booze he could drink.. 

He took the boys back to the farmhouse in Riverside because James needed less distractions to care for Marla and Frank felt awkward and like he was always being in the way without Tessa there.. 

And for a while .. Everything was okay..

Winona got some Shore Leave and spent some of her time with Sam and Jim and then went off to help her father with her mom for the rest of her down time.. 

And Frank tried .. He did.. But the stings of all the pain of the past just kept haunting him..

How come Winona could be there for her mom but not her sister? How come he was the one taking care of her kids and not her?

Why was everything in his life overshadowed by the death of George Kirk? Why was his existence defined by the death of one man?

There were days when he felt like the ghost of George Kirk just took up too much of his life.. So what if Tessa was Winona's sister?.. Tessa was gone now!!.. Why was he even still tied to these people? 

And he tried not to take it out on the kids.. He loved them as much as he sometimes also hated them and blamed their existences for his problems.. It wasn't really their faults that their mom was never around to actually raise them.. It wasn't their fault that their mom was always being pulled off in some other direction for months at a time.. It wasn't really their faults that the media always wanted whatever pieces of them, whatever pieces of JIM, that they could get..

But.. There were days when Frank would stand in front of the farmhouse and just feel a burning angry hatred and resentment..

He had spent so much of his life in the shadow of this family, of George Kirk.. And sometimes he just wanted to rid every last piece of George Kirk from his life, the man's house, his car, his kids and finally be free and have peace from this circus he felt his life had been dragged into when George Kirk died..

It started small... Frank didn't one day start just deliberately making the kids' lives hell .. Or at least he didn't think he was doing it on purpose..

Maybe subconsciously he was because of the anger and resentment and hatred that he kept bottled up.. But he really did also care about the kids as much as he sometimes really didn't want to.. So he doesn't think he meant for it to happen.. But secretly he also thinks he did mean for it to happen.. He didn't really know.. It was a line he toed and never thought he would cross because he always thought that the fact that he did care for the kids would always pull him back from that edge ...

But it started and when it did it started out small.. 

Sam was fifteen, Jim had just turned twelve, when Sam stayed out late one night and came back a little drunk and high..

It started..

When Frank roughly shoved Sam against the wall and pinned him there and shouted in his face and Jim tried putting a calming hand on Frank's shoulder and Frank shoved him so hard, Jim fell backwards and landed sprawled on his ass on the floor then Frank yelled in Sam's face "Look what you made me do!" ..

Then from that night on, things progressively got worse.. Frank progressively got worse..

Frank and Sam would always argue and fight and sometimes Frank would use his age and size and escalate things with shoving and even hitting.. 

Frank started getting drunk and staying drunk and Sam would throw things and yell at Frank to get his shit together because someone needed to be a god damned adult and Frank would yell back that, that was their mother's job but she didn't want it, didn't want them, saying that their dad even died just to get away from them because he didn't want them either, that no one did.. 

Sam and Frank would appear on tabloid covers a paparazzi getting lucky with a telephoto zoom lense and snapping a shot of Frank and Sam yelling at one another through the livingroom window, the headline "A Hero's Family Falls Apart." in the picture Jim was sitting in the upstairs window, his features barely illuminated by the bedroom light "The Youngest Kirk Suffers The Consequences." ..


	9. Chapter 9

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..

Jim started slipping up in school.. Can anyone really blame him? .. The poor kid's homelife was a disaster!

Jim was twelve and he had bruises on his back and torso from either being shoved into things or from having things thrown at him.. He hardly slept anymore because Sam and Frank were always coming to blows and the noise, the fear, the anxiety kept him awake long into the night with a lamp on as he curled in on himself on the floor with his hands covering his ears until he couldn't stand the not knowing whether or not his brother or his uncle were seriously hurt and he would peek out of his room to make sure that Frank and Sam weren't actually actively killing each other.. He always had such shit timing.. Something either Sam or Frank threw would go astray in their surprise at Jim's appearance and Jim always magically got hit with the incidental projectiles or Sam and Frank would actually wind up on the floor grappling in their fights by the time Jim came in and he would try to pry them apart only to get tossed aside into the coffee table, a chair, a wall, a pile of books that had been knocked off of a shelf during the ruckus.. Which would make Frank and Sam stop fighting to check on Jim but the damage was always already done by then.. 

And Jim's grades in school started slipping enough to gain notice...

Jim was a genius at twelve and was already a Senior in High School so for his grades to start slipping at that time?.. That caused quite a stir.. With speculation that Jim was buckling under the pressure, that Jim couldn't live up to his father's legacy.. 

It brought the vultures out with their cameras.. Getting shots of Jim from the bushes by the high school.. Someone.. A student, a teacher.. Maybe even the principal or superintendent were passing along Jim's academic information to the media hounds.. 

Pictures of Jim on supermarket rags "A Hero's Last Legacy Becomes a Failure." with pictures of a print out of Jim's grades to the side with a big red "F" in a big red circle photoshopped over the paper, in reality Jim still hadn't gotten less than a "C" even on his worst day..

And to make things worse.. Now that Jim was no longer "little" there were a lot more "Heart Throb" articles out about him.. It was always in the background while he was growing up.. In the Summers while he was still a tot, ages three-to-nine, sometimes articles with pictures of him in shorts would crop up with words like "Future Sex Symbol" and little hearts with arrows pointing at his legs or ass and words "Jim likes short, shorts!", "George Kirk's Son shows off his legs!" and if Jim was shirtless then the tabloid headlines could be downright leud and perverse.. But now that Jim was TWELVE it was like almost everything he did somehow had ways of being made into something sexualized by the media if they were lucky enough to get pictures of it, from Jim bending over and the band of his underwear peeking out above the back of his pants to Jim chewing on the eraser end of a pencil in class.. So it wasn't a far leap for tabloids to start erroneously concluding that Jim's grades were slipping because he MUST BE distracted by a special girl with pictures of Jim and the headlines "Baby Jim Kirk, Growing Up, Falling In Love And Failing Classes: A Rite Of Passage.." .. "Who is the mystery girl George Kirk's Son is falling for?"

And .. Well.. Jim and his mom and, well, really their whole family, but mostly Jim and his mom, had started getting "Fan Mail" the day after George Kirk died, Jim had been mostly shielded from it growing up, but every once in a while a Fan Mail letter would get through to Jim who would unwittingly open it without thinking right up until he regretted it.. Sam used to tease a five-year-old Jim about how many marriage proposals he was always getting in the mail.. Then when the tabloids started erroneously saying Jim must have a girl he liked, the marriage proposals turned into death threats and obsessed rants of how Jim COULDN'T be with anyone but "them" (the writer of the letter whom he had never even met and was usually an adult that was usually twice his age or older), accusations of betrayal and philandering and .. "Just Chill On The Dating Till You're Older, Okay?".. and "God, you're already a Manslut Just Like You Father and you're not even officially a teenager yet!" and "You're Ruining Your Life For Some GIRL?" .. 

So.. Jim had a lot going on in his life and it kept him awake at night and distracted in the day and .. So of course he was failing .. He was a paranoid wreck half the time because the paparazzis were even more drawn to him now that someone somewhere had made it acceptable and okay to pry into his (nonexistent) love life and make everything he did somehow increasingly sexual.. 

One week it was one thing and the next week it was another.. Soon the "Has To Be Because Of A Girl" thing died down and uproared suggestions of "Maybe it's a BOY!" along with Hate Mail calling him homophobic slurs and letters "It's Always The Good Ones." and "Why Did You Have To Choose Being GAY Over Being With ME?!" and "Tell Me Who Your Boyfriend Is So I Can Gut Him For Steeling You.".. 

And when that died down it became "Maybe it's DRUGS and ALCOHOL..".. "George Kirk's Legacy Becomes A Disappointment To Us All And Follows In The Footsteps Of His Delinquent Brother!".. "Is George Kirk Even Really Their Father?!" and suddenly outpourings of tabloids suggesting Winona cheated on George and showing grainy pictures of unidentifiable men in a row with a red arrow pointing at the row "Is one of these men the real father of Winona Kirk's children?" 

Things at the farmhouse didn't get better.

Frank drank a whole lot more and Sam stayed out a whole lot later and Jim's golden hued childhood would eventually end with blood and a broken beer bottle....

Sam stumbled in and there was yelling like always.. Jim rushed in and tried to calm things down from a distance but ran into the coffee table, his shin clipping the corner, upsetting the dozens of glass beer bottles, one tipped over and rolled over the edge, shattering on the wood floor..

Frank grabbed the collar of Jim's shirt and hit Jim upside the head with a hard slap and a roar of "Now clean it up!" and a horrified whisper of "Jesus!" from Sam as he stumbled to try to help Jim but Frank backhanded Sam with a drunken slur of "Stay the hell outta this! Let 'im figure out how to clean up his own goddamned mess!" .. "And YOU!" Frank whirled on Sam "Start cleaning up YOUR OWN GODDAMN MESSES!.. I ain't bailin you out NO MORE!" Frank stumbled and sat on the couch blinking in a stupor "And JIM!. .. You're the.. The .. The CAUSE .. you're the REASON for this mess in the first place!.. Clean it up boy!... " .. "clean it up.." Frank muttered then tipped sideways on the couch and fell asleep with his legs still hanging off the side..

The next day Frank was more surly than ever even though he hadn't yet cracked open a bottle of booze..

Frank started with small things.. 

Selling George Kirk's old vinyl records and old books to the highest bidding "Fan" ..

Sam and Frank got into a fight over it.. Of course they got into a fight over almost everything anyway..

"This is our dad's stuff!" Sam yelled as he watched Frank sell another "George Kirk Memento." online "Mom's gonna be pissed!"

"Listen here, you little piece of shit.. The whole problem in this house is there's too much of your father in it.. Maybe if I can get rid of everything Kirk once and for all we can finally have some peace and become fucking normal for a change .. Kirk's shadow covers everything!.. Fucking everything! It's tainting every single fucking thing!!" Frank ranted like he had cracked and lost his mind..

"I'm a KIRK!" Sam shouted.

"Not anymore you're not.. Not in this house!" Frank yelled back.

"This is HIS HOUSE!" Sam raged.

"Yeah?!.. And who the HELL is left to live in it, huh? Your vote doesn't get to count because you're just a pint sized wannabe punk!".. Frank growled then spun to face Jim "Jim!.. Get your ass outside to the barn and get that old car out there washed up.. It's gonna be the next thing to go.."

Jim gave a shaky nod and took the escape handed to him..

Out in the barn Jim pulled back a white tarp and revealed an old red Corvette..

Sam stormed out of the house with the screen door whapping shut behind him..

"I can't be a Kirk in this house?!" Sam shouted at the house just past Jim's shoulder "Then watch me go be a Kirk somewhere else!" Sam said seethingly as he turned on his heel and started marching down the long stretch of road that led towards the outside of town..

Somewhere off across the road Jim saw a flash of light.. Another day.. Another asshole with a camera watching their family fall apart ..

Jim could hear Frank inside the house loudly ranting about Kirks and demons and ghosts and hauntings..

And Jim looked down at the Corvette and just wished he could escape all the crazy..

A few minutes later Jim was speeding down the road and zooming past Sam with the radio blaring and a huge smile on his face..

Let Frank, Sam, the paparazzi and the ghost of a man he never even knew, all eat his dust..

The Corvette wound up crumpled in the bottom of a ravine, Sam and Frank were on the same side long enough to be frantically worried mother-hens over a banged up Jim that barely jumped from the car in time before it went over the edge.. 

And for a while there was peace.. Because Sam and Frank were both so worried that Jim had just intentionally tried to kill himself and that made them both at least try to get their shit together .. Well.. For a little while at least..

The "doing special stuff for and with Jim to show him he's loved and we don't want him to die" phase couldn't last forever after all..

The tabloids had a field day with "Rebel Jim." which had media hounds staked out everywhere Frank and/or the boys were likely to go.. Once again putting strain and pressure on things that were already cracked..

There was a fight.. Frank went to throw a glass beer bottle at Sam but Jim got in the way..

Jim threw his arm up last second and the bottle broke in half over his forearm then fell to the floor with a clink.. Frank took a step forward and instinctively Jim cowared stammering "I'll clean it up, I swear!" and threw himself down to the floor and began picking up the pieces of the bottle.. Frank took a step forward and Jim fell bavkwards holding up the top half of the broken bottle by the neck with the sharp jagged edge pointing up at Frank and Sam standing at Jim's back trying to help the kid up.. It didn't matter what had really happened .. From the outside looking in it looked like Jim was threatening Frank with a broken bottle and somewhere someone with a telephoto lense was getting their moneyshot.. 

"The Fallen Angel: George Kirk's Last Legacy had a violent tantrum when caught with booze and almost killed his Uncle!" ..


	10. Chapter 10

..

..

Jim soon learned that where the media and tabloids were concerned, he was either the worse sort of guilty sinner or the best sort of innocent saint and that there was no in between no matter what he did there were only two lights he would ever be painted in for public consumption..

There were always people who acted like they knew more about him and his life than even he himself did.. 

In one of his classes he found out that he, his dad, his family.. They were actually required learning .. And how could he fail a test about himself and his own family?.. Apparently it was possible much to the "disappointment" in him that followed coming from pretty much everywhere..

Winona had gotten her shore leave extended by some miracle for family emergency purposes when the whole "Jim trying to stab Frank (ACCORDING TO ONLY THE TABLOIDS).." thing happened and she had rushed from her parents' place to the farmhouse in Iowa.. 

Frank was put in an In-Patient Rehab Facility where he couldn't just be released on his own recognizance until he went through an entire six month In-Patient stay where he would be forced to stay sober and get his act together.. 

Sam was sent to James and Marla to help care for his grandmother and learn some responsibility..

And Jim..

Jim was sent to stay with George's younger sister, Amelia, her wife, Sarah and their three children for the entire year until Winona could next get another shore leave..

Jim boarded a shuttle, escaping the media at long last and was grateful that where he was going there wouldn't be any people with cameras for once in his life because not a lot of "unnecessary" technological items were even allowed at the Colony on Tarsus IV..


	11. Chapter 11

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.. 

Jim's first sight of Tarsus IV was cracked, sickly yellow colored dirt..

As the Shuttle landed at the only Station at the Colony Jim stepped away from the window and towards the door just as the the hydraulics hissed and the door began folding in half and then unfolding the top half leaning outside the shuttle, and turning the top half of the door into the bottom half of a ramp..

People shuffled off at a sedate pace.. A few dozen crates and pallets of supplies that couldn't be found on Tarsus IV and thus had to be brought in by monthly delivery were unloaded from the back of the shuttle and from locked storage boxes under the shuttle.

Amelia and Sarah were waiting at under the shade of the Station waving Jim over with smiles and their kids running amok chasing each other behind the Station...

Jim shouldered his duffle and his toiletry bag and grabbed the handle of his large wheeled suitcase with the hand not clutching the straps on his shoulder to keep the bags from sliding off..

Sarah grabbed the arm of her eldest wayward child and pointed at Jim.. The ten-year-old Matty looked sheepish and ran over and grabbed the duffle bag and toiletry bag from Jim's shoulder taking the duffle onto his own shoulder and passing the toiletry bag off to his eight-year-old sister, Bianca who also looked sheepish..

Six-year-old, Oliver, kept running around the Station as if he didn't know his siblings were no longer playing chase with him..

"Thanks.. But you don't have to.." Jim started to insist that they didn't have to help with his bags.. 

"You're a guest, Jimmy!.. Mommy says it's polite to help guests with their bags." Bianca replied.

"It's fine, we both wanted to help it was actually us who suggested we take your bags.. We just got caught up playing chase." Matty said with a shrug and a grin..

"Oh. That's nice of you.. Thank you.. Um .. But if my big bag gets too heavy you can trade me for the one that rolls.. Kay, Matty?" Jim asked.

"Yeah, okay... Whatdya got in this thing anyway?" Matty asked as he almost tipped over due to the weight of the bag.

"Clothes.. Shoes.. Books.."

"How many books?" Matty asked "Let me guess there's hardly any clothes really in here isn't there?"

"Bet he has even more books in the suitcase that rolls." Bianca said with a laugh.

"Yeah, yeah.. I'm a stack of books with legs.. Laugh it up, squirt.." Jim chuckled as he and Matty and Bianca walked towards Amelia, Sarah and Oliver..


	12. Chapter 12

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..

Being on Tarsus IV with no real Media Presence.. Was a relief..

Jimmy could actually go outside and play and make real friends and the only thing people on Tarsus IV knew about James Tiberius Kirk was that he was Amelia's and Sarah's Nephew, and, Bianca's, Matty's and Oliver's Cousin.. 

No cameras in his face.. No tabloids exploiting everything he said or did or telling lies about things he didn't say or do..

It was paradise..

Then after after a week of bliss.. Amelia and Sarah enrolled Jim in school.

Jim was ready for horrible Modern History Lessons with his father as a subject to study.. But.. Was pleasantly surprised when that wasn't the case.. The school on Tarsus IV taught from actual text books and none of them covered anything after twenty-two-nineteen.. It was outdated sure.. But that meant that there on Tarsus IV, George Kirk and his family, for once, weren't required learning and that for once, Jim was truly anonymous..


End file.
